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There's several hunderd species of catfish in the hobby only a very few eat enough algae to make any impression. Even those that do need a proper diet and cannot exist on algae alone.

Ask your uncle, probably the water is from a desalination plant and therefore about neutral ph and very soft. If that's true then you can keep just about anything with only a few small adjustments.

A simple tank, assuming you could get the bits and pieces of course could look something like this:
40-60cm wide, 30 deep, 30 high, that's about 15 gallons I think. Get a single T5 fixture onto that.
10 ember tetras for the middle water layer
7 pygmy cories for the bottom.

Use a coarse sand for the bottom, find a nice piece of driftwood and soak well so it sinks and loses the salt. Tie some java fern and anubias nanae onto it, plant around it with vallisneria, bacopa or even eloda at the back, Cryptocoryne wendtii or pogestemon helferi or Rotala rotundifolia (does require frequent pruning) in the foreground to soften up the transition to the wood a bit. Find a few pebbles that don't react when exposed to vinegar and place those where you like.

An alternative, get some wood and a few pebbles and just get amazonian frogbit.

There's several hunderd species of catfish in the hobby only a very few eat enough algae to make any impression. Even those that do need a proper diet and cannot exist on algae alone.

Ask your uncle, probably the water is from a desalination plant and therefore about neutral ph and very soft. If that's true then you can keep just about anything with only a few small adjustments.

A simple tank, assuming you could get the bits and pieces of course could look something like this:
40-60cm wide, 30 deep, 30 high, that's about 15 gallons I think. Get a single T5 fixture onto that.
10 ember tetras for the middle water layer
7 pygmy cories for the bottom.

Use a coarse sand for the bottom, find a nice piece of driftwood and soak well so it sinks and loses the salt. Tie some java fern and anubias nanae onto it, plant around it with vallisneria, bacopa or even eloda at the back, Cryptocoryne wendtii or pogestemon helferi or Rotala rotundifolia (does require frequent pruning) in the foreground to soften up the transition to the wood a bit. Find a few pebbles that don't react when exposed to vinegar and place those where you like.

An alternative, get some wood and a few pebbles and just get amazonian frogbit.

Yes, the water is from a desalination plant.
I appreciate all the help and I can't wait to start.

I think I've made a small mistake though.
I named the fish that I really like but non of them are available at my LPS (local pet store)

I can order and ship them ofcourse but I worry that they'll die.
I'm thinking that today I'll go to the store and write the species that they have.

A seller with a good reputation will know how to properly ship and offer a DOA (dead on arrival) policy. People on this forum order fish all the time from aquabid, from breeders who don't live near them and some fish are transported to America from overseas.

Very often people are interested in fish not found in their LFS - if you are willing to pay shipping, it's done all the time.

A seller with a good reputation will know how to properly ship and offer a DOA (dead on arrival) policy. People on this forum order fish all the time from aquabid, from breeders who don't live near them and some fish are transported to America from overseas.

Very often people are interested in fish not found in their LFS - if you are willing to pay shipping, it's done all the time.

Oh ok and how much is shipping estimated ?

Originally Posted by Longshot

If p0ssible, ask the LPS clerk if they have a master 0rder list f0r the fish they are willing t0 0rder, take a c0py 0f it and g0 fr0m there.